


One Good Turn

by deathmallow



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: Gen, apparently I really like tormenting poor Flynn, sorry buddy, time team friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-23
Updated: 2018-05-23
Packaged: 2019-05-10 09:31:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14734424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathmallow/pseuds/deathmallow
Summary: Christopher returns the favor to Flynn. Post 2x08.





	One Good Turn

**Author's Note:**

> I own nothing, etc. Mild warnings for violence and allusions to character death.

Flynn's companion of the day was a different Lucy: Parsons, not Preston. Being a woman of Mexican, native, and possibly black background in the late nineteenth century hadn’t been an easy road, and then marrying a white man, and both of them being agitators for labor reform--remarkable. 

Preston, not Parsons, sat on the couch with her own book, idly sipping her coffee. Must have not been a good book: she had the irritated and disappointed look of a professor itching to pull out the red pen on a sub-par student essay. He couldn’t hide a slight smile at that.

Jessica and Wyatt were in their room, and three guesses what they were doing. Flynn made a mental note to not head past their room for the next half hour or so to avoid the noise. Mason, off tinkering with the Lifeboat again, occasionally muttering to himself, and the _tink_ of a dropped tool on the concrete floor. 

Rufus and Jiya at another table: _A-2. Hit._ Battleship. The two of them had held a three-day War marathon last week. Mason had remarked about how strange it was that even board games or cards could become a treat in a place like this. Probably only Flynn and Wyatt understood roughing it in stressful situations to the point where any distraction, however mundane, became a lifeline. It certainly was an upgrade for him from six months in solitary. Carte blanche book privileges courtesy of Agent Christopher and all, given she was already used to Lucy requesting books to read. 

He was just about to the point of the gallows with Albert Parsons after the Haymarket Riots, and then reading about Lucy’s continued decades-long fight as an activist, when that tingle of awareness told him someone was behind him. “Flynn, I’d like to talk to you,” Agent Christopher said.

He’d seen the way Lucy winced when he’d dogeared a corner, so he stuck an empty sugar packet in as a bookmark, closed the book, and set it on the table. “Ah, are we finally getting that Netflix subscription you offered me?” He stood, pushing the chair in. “I’m a few seasons behind on _Orange Is The New Black_ these days, but y’know, I think I should get back into it. It’ll really strike a chord now.” Three seasons behind, to be precise, given he hadn't exactly been a position to watch it since the end of 2014. Lorena had loved that show. They’d joked about having a drinking game based on when Piper got too annoying to handle.

Rufus muttered, “And here I had Flynn pegged as a total _Punisher_ type.”

“Just so long as it’s not _Iron Fist_ ,” Jiya replied. “B-1.”

Once glance at her face, and that combination of stone-cold operator with a hint of exasperation that he had to admire, told him Denise Christopher was Not Amused. “Be back from the principal’s office soon.” But even as he made the flippant remark, his pulse sped up. She had some kind of intel, or question, and she wanted to discuss it in private. She made no bones about chewing any of them out in front of the others, from what he’d seen. The brown cardboard box in her hands made sense of it. Sized about right for documents, or maybe photos. She had something new on Rittenhouse, and wanted him to look at it.

They ended up in his room, given there was no real private corner in this damn bunker. He turned to her, leaning on the cubbies. He jerked his chin towards the box, with its black Amazon tape. “What, Rittenhouse is selling manifestos on Amazon now?”

“No, the box was from a book that I ordered for Olivia.” He remembered ordering books for Iris. Ones appropriate for her age, other ones that he and Lorena had loved and intended to put away for later when Iris was older. She held the box out, awkwardness written in the lines of her body. “Take a look.”

Taking the box from her, he pulled the folded flaps open, and felt as though she’d just punched him in the chest. 

He carefully took the top photograph out, still in its silver frame. Iris, with her My Little Pony birthday cake and her blue cowgirl hat. Lorena and a Garcia Flynn he sometimes could barely remember flanking their little girl, leaning down into the shot as Lorena’s sister Jenny snapped the picture, all three of them beaming. Iris’ fifth birthday--four months later, she was gone.

He controlled his suddenly unsteady hands, set it aside, and looked at the next one: Darfur, 2005. Lorena’s hair in a careless ponytail, her t-shirt and capris grubby with wear, with her medical pack in one hand. Him in the same dark fatigues he’d been wearing for a week at that point, with his team tracking down the Janjaweed riders and at the aid camp before he set off with Barkhado and a Red Cross nurse, to bring the kids back home and treat more injuries from the raid. Barkhado had insisted they both get in the picture with the whole village, flashing a huge grin of rejoicing. His nephew Taban and niece Haweeyo had been among the kids taken, and returned. _You helped care for them. Bring them back safe._ That aid camp was the first he’d met Lorena Valaitis. He looked away from her face, looked instead at the faces of the kids, remembering. Haweeyo wanted to be a teacher. Aaden had cried every night, Lorena comforting him and the other children with their nightmares.

There were a few more pictures in there, including the hand-carved walnut frame that he was fairly sure was their wedding picture. But he wasn’t ready to look at them just yet. He licked his lips, feeling like he couldn’t breathe. “How?” he managed finally, looking up from a dead woman and a ghost of a man to Agent Christopher.

“Your wife's family took most of the pictures.” Yes, of course, when they’d cleaned out the house, Jenny and Paul and Lorena's parents would have taken most of the mementos. He could imagine they’d taken pictures of Lorena and Iris, but the ones with the monster who’d supposedly murdered them would have been discarded. “But there were a few that were checked in as evidence.”

“Yes, these would have been. They were in the living room.” The police would have taken them as evidence of the crime scene, given the damage in the living room. Probably assuming after Rittenhouse doctored the scene that was where he'd supposedly first attacked Lorena, who'd then escaped and run upstairs to protect Iris. He’d fought one of the Rittenhouse agents there, presumably their lookout. The pictures had hit the floor, glass shattering, as they fell off the mantle. He still had a scar on his left instep from hitting a shard of broken glass in his bare feet. Or maybe it was a shard of that vase from Yuma. At that point all he could think was to buy enough time to run, that one man with a Glock against at least six of them with military grade weapons was too many, and in pure survival mode he couldn’t even process the horror he'd glimpsed in Iris' bedroom yet. 

“I made a call.” Now he looked at her in earnest, meeting her eyes. He knew how the system worked in covert ops. Calling in a favor, people saved that for something big. Things like springing a supposed international terrorist from prison, and finding a way to blame it on the Iranians, to make use of his talents and knowledge in a long-term black ops mission. Not for retrieving said supposed international terrorist’s personals, let alone making sure the glass got replaced in the broken frames.

He didn’t ask _Why?_ He already knew. This was her acknowledgment. He’d told her to get the hell out and go home to her family. He’d heard her and Lucy discussing that she’d given the pictures of her wife and kids to Lucy to keep in the Lifeboat. So now she repaid the favor by giving him this. He’d thought sometimes that three and a half years later, he was losing the memory of their faces. She didn’t waste time saying something so obvious as _I can’t bring them back, but I can give you this._ For that, he was grateful. “If you want to keep them in the Lifeboat, or make copies for that,” she said carefully, “you can.”

In the Lifeboat, so that no matter what threads of history were tugged, the pictures would be safe. This wasn't a Homeland Security agent dealing with a disgraced NSA operative. This was Denise Christopher, wife and mother. She’d given him a gun a few weeks ago before they headed off for the Gunter Hotel, and he’d seen the mark of trust in that. But that had been trust in an asset, giving a beast teeth and claws to better do the mission. This...this was something different. He wouldn’t go so far as to say it was friendship, but she’d acknowledged a good turn, and maybe it was seeing him as a little more than a necessary evil and a pain in the ass. He likewise wouldn’t ruin the moment by stating it so obviously.

He looked back at Iris’ sunbeam smile, a tiny echo of the smile on Lorena’s face. He would never be that man again, but seeing their faces would help him not lose what little he had left of them. Breathed deeper, trying to steady himself. It was joy and agony all at once, a feeling within his chest he could barely stand. “Thank you.”


End file.
